Let's get a few things straight.

I'd like to address some smears that have resurfaced - once again - and only because the sheer willful ignorance about separating fact from fiction - or the inability to do so has begun to give me a headache. So, let's be clear, McCain and Co have released the hounds and the smears that have been let loose are running rampantly around, here are a few of them:

Barack Obama Is, in fact, a US citizen, and from Factcheck:

“When Barack Obama Jr. was born on Aug. 4,1961, in Honolulu, Kenya was a British colony, still part of the United Kingdom’s dwindling empire. As a Kenyan native, Barack Obama Sr. was a British subject whose citizenship status was governed by The British Nationality Act of 1948. That same act governed the status of Obama Sr.‘s children.

Since Sen. Obama has neither renounced his U.S. citizenship nor sworn an oath of allegiance to Kenya, his Kenyan citizenship automatically expired on Aug. 4,1982.”

Obama does not refuse to place his hand over his heart for the pledge, refuse to say the pledge, or any other unpatriotic nonsense. From ABC:

Obama said the photo was taken during the singing of the national anthem, not the pledge.

“My grandfather taught me how to say the Pledge of Allegiance when I was 2,” Obama said, his annoyance obvious. “During the Pledge of Allegiance you put your hand over your heart. During the national anthem you sing.

Yes, Michelle Obama is proud of her country. From ABC:

Appearing eager to set the record straight [on ABC’s The View] in front of a television audience of millions of women, Obama said she is “proud of my country, without a doubt.”

“I’m a girl who grew up in a working-class neighborhood in Chicago let me tell you, of course I’m proud,” she said. “Nowhere but in America could my story be possible.”

“What I was talking about is pride in the political process,” she said.

Yes, Obama supports the troops, from Factcheck:

This is another viral e-mail falsehood. The author now says it's not true; the Army says it's not true; and video and photos show Obama shaking hands with troops and eating breakfast with them as well.

The swiftboater is responsible for the attacks on Obama about Ayers

From the website:

In 2004, Harold Simmons was the biggest funder of the manipulative smear group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. In 2008, Simmons is the sole donor funding a vicious attack ad in some battleground states that uses tortured logic and clumsy innuendo to invent a tie between Barack Obama and terrorism.

The ad goes completely beyond the pale by cynically exploiting the tragedy of 9/11 in an unfounded connection with Chicago academic William Ayers. Then it claims that Ayers somehow “launched” Barack Obama’s career — an assertion so outlandish that not even Simmons’ fellow discredited Swift Boater Jerome Corsi included it in his smear book.

The ad may even be a criminal violation of campaign finance laws. Simmons has previously been fined tens of thousands of dollars for campaign finance violations – including forging the signatures of his own daughters to make political contributions from trust funds.

Obama is not part of Acorn, from the website:

Discredited Republican voter-suppression guru Ken Blackwell is attacking Barack Obama with naked lies about his supposed connection to ACORN.

• Fact: Barack was never an ACORN community organizer.
• Fact: ACORN never hired Obama as a trainer, organizer, or any type of employee.
• Fact: ACORN was not part of Project Vote, the successful voter registration drive Barack ran in 1992.

In his capacity as an attorney, Barack represented ACORN in a successful lawsuit alongside the U.S. Department of Justice against the state of Illinois to force state compliance with a federal voting access law. For his work helping enforce the law, called “Motor Voter,” Barack received the IVI-IPO Legal Eagle Award in 1995. (For more about Barack’s career, check out our Obama bio.)

Obama's financial advisors are not Fannie and Freddie.

The McCain campaign is the one with many ties to key lobbyists and advisers to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, including the campaign’s campaign manager Rick Davis and McCain’s Senate Chief of Staff Mark Buse. Read more about their extensive ties to Fannie and Freddie here: Newsweek, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. John McCain started smearing Barack Obama about non-existent ties to Fannie Mae in some of his deceptive attack ads. Anonymous smear emails have followed McCain’s lead by fabricating even more connections.

These smears disguise the fact that Barack actually has a sensible, detailed plan to fix the economy — and it’s a much better source of answers than anonymous attack emails.

The non-partisan fact-check website Snopes.com looked into these smears, and their conclusions about Barack and the Fannie Mae executives shouldn’t be surprising: “None of them has (or apparently ever had) ongoing roles with the campaign as chief economic advisors.”

Not an adviser: Frank Raines
Barack estimates that he and Raines have talked for “maybe five minutes” in their lives, and Frank Raines himself even released a statement saying that he is “not an advisor to Barack Obama, nor have I provided his campaign with advice on housing or economic matters.”

Not an adviser: Tim Howard
This supposed connection appears to have been made up completely out of thin air. Snopes.com writes, “We haven’t yet found any tangible connection between Tim Howard and the Obama campaign, however, much less any information supporting the claim that Howard is a ‘chief economic adviser’ to Obama.”

Not an adviser: Jim Johnson
Jim Johnson has never held a paid position with Obama for America. He volunteered to help Barack select a vice presidential nominee but stepped down after just one week.

And finally, no, Obama is not friends with William Ayers
From the NYtimes:

A review of records of the schools project and interviews with a dozen people who know both men, suggest that Mr. Obama, 47, has played down his contacts with Mr. Ayers, 63. But the two men do not appear to have been close. Nor has Mr. Obama ever expressed sympathy for the radical views and actions of Mr. Ayers, whom he has called “somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was 8.”

And from CNN:

CNN Fact check wrote about Palin’s claim that Obama is palling around with terrorists, “Verdict: False. There is no indication that Ayers and Obama are now “palling around,” or that they have had an ongoing relationship in the past three years. Also, there is nothing to suggest that Ayers is now involved in terrorist activity or that other Obama associates are.”

OK great, I'd like everyone to move on now, and get over the fact that Obama is ahead, and that McCain's got nuthin'.

Oh, the Gallup poll today:

Obama 51%, McCain 41%.

And check out the electoral map on RealClearPolitics it's a doozy.